HOW TO try Windows Azure for free (without any credit card)

Update - The free Day Pass offer ran for a while but the promo codes are no longer being offered. A credit card (won't be charged if consumption of resources is within limit) has to be provided to avail a 30-day trial of Azure. Though not as feature-rich as Azure, an alternative to Azure is AppHarbor. AppHarbor is a fully hosted .NET PaaS with a free feature-limited plan, which includes 20MB storage.

- 0 -
Windows Azure, Microsoft's cloud platform offers .NET developers a great opportunity to extend their skills to this new platform. You don't have to spend a bomb to get started. While there is a free trial offer that doesn't have any upfront costs, you may have to submit your credit card.

The free Windows Azure Platform 30 Day Pass doesn't need a credit card to register. I've seen promo codes that are needed to get a Pass in various MSDN blog posts & Codeplex. The promo codes don't last forever so you may have to grab them when you see it or keeping looking at those places for new promo codes if you want it gratis.

Here are some free Azure learning resources I've found (work in progress):

Pluralsight currently has 5 Beginner & Intermediate level online training courses of totally 15 hours duration. Having received an annual subscription as a Pluralsight offer for MVPs, I've watched some of them & found them to be very helpful (will post a review shortly). Their monthly subscription price of $14.50 or roughly Rs. 700 in India for their entire course collection looks like a great deal to me.